Not all us fen want to be in space, you know. Folks like me, say, who get airsick real easy. 'Sides, I like my creature comforts. Those fenships tend to be a bit cramped. 'Cept for those folks from West Virginia. Now they had the right idea.
Anyway, there's a lot of us. The fen in space don't think highly of us, I know. They call us "fendane", like we were something less than proper fen because we didn't pack up everything and take off for orbit in an 82 Ford, because we're not out there working on the Mars terraform. Well let me tell you, bud, sometimes it's harder to stay at home and change the world you know than to travel halfway across the system and change a world you've never seen before.
I'm not the only one to feel that way. There are a lot of folks who share my opinion, folks who think the balance of goverment and people has shifted to someplace where the government and its cronies in industry and organized crime have all started thinking of the people as their little toys and servants. There are a lot of folks who want to see that changed. We're not putting anything "back the way it was" -- most of us aren't fool enough to think things were much better in the past, and some of us are historians enough to know it was pretty damned worse at times. Doesn't matter. There's an idea involved -- the same one behind the Declaration, behind the Constitution, the one that got shoved aside as soon as the Government settled down into "business as usual".
We aim to change that. And not by gallivanting out in space.
The folk in space do have a few good ideas. Front companies, foundations, things like that. We set one up. One of the things we did with the 'wave made us a lot of money fast. (Not going to tell you what it is, because we're still going to be using it every once in a while.) We put that money into a not-for-profit group of our own making, a cross between a charity and a college, sort of. We didn't name it what we actually call it, that would be a dead giveaway. It was enough that it just existed.
Then we, as the foundation, got busy. Built us a couple supercomputers with the 'wave, complete with AIs. Used them to worm our way into a few systems here and there. Changed a few records. Hid a few people from the eye of officialdom. Righted a few wrongs while we were at it.
And we bought us a bunch of used cars. Trans Ams from the early 1980s. Refurbished them. Kitted them out, you might say. And waved the lot.
And now they're on the road, criss-crossing the country, righting wrongs and fighting the kind of folks who want power over other folks. Their drivers don't exist, not in government records anyway. Neither do the cars. Our AIs with their hooks in the DMV systems all over the country make sure of that. But the people recognize them when they come to town. And they know what name to give them.
They call them the Knight Riders.

Christmas time is here.. Time for Joy, and time for Cheer..
I stared blankly at the plain brown wrapper on the coffee-can sized package the postal clerk had handed me earlier. I had an idea what was in it, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it.
In the aftermath of That Con, a friend of mine had privately admitted to having a small supply of 'wavium, pure strain, before the guacamole incident. I'd asked her for some, and crossed her palm with the thirty piece of silver for shipping, and a few more for her trouble.
No problem there, I make damn good money fiddling with radios for a local utility.
But now I had a can of Handwavium. Some people were saying this was the new Messiah, magic come to earth, a grey goo nightmare waiting to happen, the story was different depending on who you asked and how much they had been drinking. I thought it was possibliity in a jar, myself.
I retired to the garage, and firing up a cigarette, I started unpacking the 'glass and steel' bins and buckets from my ill-fated alcohol-based-rocket-fuel-production experiment, idly wondering if that corner of the yard would ever grow grass again as I did so. Once I had my tools out, I set the can on my stainless steel bench and unwrapped it.
The coffee can size and shape made perfect sense now, with the bright and cheerful 'Folgers' logo staring back at me. The lid was duct-taped on rather agressively, and I cut it off carefully, removing the tape and lid to reveal.. a quiescent grayish ooze, with no movement or changes to indicate anything.

I decanted the ooze into a glass tun and considered my next step...

A YEAR LATER.
I heaved the head off the big Cat Diesel and set it gently on a rollycart, then scrubbed and wiped until the engine ahead of me was clean and bright. Reaching into the cylinders with a brush, I spread on a thin layer of 'Wavium Black, a strain I had fed on motor oil, premium unleaded, trucking magazines and Bob the Builder episodes. Coating the inside of all six cylinders carefully, I then applied traces of 'Silver', a blend fed on golden age Silver Surfer comics and cut with elemental mercury and activated charcoal.
My mind fixated on what I hoped would happen, I got down under the motor and sprayed off the motor oil from the crankshaft, repeating the same process as the cylinders. A couple of additional areas got the treatment, and I started bolting covers and 'wavium treated gaskets on as I cleaned up. The sun went down and the temperature started to drop as I finished bolting the head back on the big Diesel, and I was shivering as I unplugged the ECM and headed back to the shop.
In the heated, well lit shop, I considered the ECM, unsure what was going to happen next. I had developed a few strains of Handwavium for specific mechanical applications, but I had nothing going that seemed appropriate for computers or computing power. I decided on a course of action, and put the little engine computer module in a small sorting tub, bedding it on pages ripped out of a heavy equipment wholesale catalog that ran fairly heavy on stories and reviews. I drew a can of base 'Wavium from one of my holding tanks, and poured a layer into the tub, filling it a touch above the ECM.
I said a quick prayer under my breath, still unsure as to whom or what I was praying, and shut off the lights. I fired up the pickup and headed home, worried and hopeful about the next day.

Ten acres won't improve itself, so it was with a happy grin and a hot coffee that I greeted Sparky as I arrived at the land the next day. He'd already been at work, and the happily grumbling Cat he climbed down from seemed to indicate that my work had at least 'not failed'.
"Morning Sparky, the Cat seems to be running good today"
"Yeah, boss, but that new ECM didn't fit into the old brackets, I had to fabricate one this morning"
I nodded sagely, masking a deep and shivery excitement. We walked over to the idling Cat, and as I laid my hand on the engine compartment cover, I swear she leaned into my hand and purred. Sparky gave me a curious look as I, with a shit-eating grin, opened the compartment and checked the fit of Sparky's new bracket, which was perfect. The ECM was now bright yellow, and signifigantly longer, with a large Cat logo on it's upper side. I reached forward and scratched it behind the connector, and the Cat shivered in pleasure, it's engine note dropping to just above 'stall'.
I grinned at Sparky and explained what I'd been up to last night, and he shook his head in disbelief.. and the work of clearing the land went a lot faster, with a Cat that thought it was a cat, and needed ear-scritches and pets as well as diesel and hydraulic oil, but seemed to have almost doubled it's available pushing power.

Ten acres isn't much land, I reflected that evening over reindeer sausage and sourdough biscuits. Between me and Sparky, the rought layout we'd been working on sat, areas in green highlighting our current progress.
"At this rate we're going to be working all through this winter.. finish up in early '09", Sparky said, digging into his own plate.
"Yeah, but we can at least pour the cement this winter, it's Portland, it'll cure."
"Roof over the cut and heat it?" Sparky asked, and we fell into the comfortable shorthand of two old friends, discussing our strategic goals.
Spring, '09
The basic shapes and structures were finished. A near-square rectangle of land, the edges walled in a 'Wavium based cement we called 'Grunt', because it ended up being so damn heavy and strong. We figured the three-meter thick border we had put on the land could take anything short of a city-killer kinetic energy weapon, and we weren't too sure it couldn't take that, this stuff was _tough_. A one-foot square pillar spurred off the wall had resisted everything we had, including 'Kitty', the 'waved Cat 936 wheel loader that had been the backbone of our work, and was the matriarch of our little fleet of construction and work vehicles.
various hangars and structures dotted the landscape, all enclosed in the foot-thick 'roof pillars' that traced our boundaries. I bumbled along the access road in one of the few un'waved vehicles in the fleet, an old Suzuki ATV, and considered. Ten acres, tons of cement, hundreds of gallons of diesel and thousands of dollars, every scrap of money I could beg or borrow. My father, and Sparky's father had both taken out second mortgages to pay for equipment and supplies.. We were committed, perhaps overcommitted, financially. Without some financial help and advice from other Fen, we could easily end up in a world of hurt.
I saw the gate rising, and bumbled my way over.. maybe this was the carbon fiber strakes for the overhead dome..

It was. a whole bloody lot of ten-foot carbon fiber rods, light and strong, and a truckload of bracketting and assembly tools for them. We had developed a plan based around the willow huts used by some of the Native peoples, and we were fairly confident in it's success. Given that even willow grew far too slow for our current timetable, we'd decided to use a signifigantly faster growing plant that was almost as strong.
The Fireweed sprouts were coming along nicely, and we staked each one with carbon fiber stakes, tying the plants with nylon ties and coating with handwavium. Dusting the whole assemblage with carbon fiber dust and praying, I moved right along.
The day was still young, so I cruised down to the engine bay. Drawn from innumerable anime and sci-fi shows and my own fevered mind, the engine was a Whedonesque rotating nightmare, turning over just above idle now to provide electricity and airflow for the rest of the complex. I considered the massive spindle, checking the battery levels and fuel flows and status indicators. Given how the engine responded to near-constant attention, I needed to get a maintenance officer down here. Who was I kidding, I needed a Kaylee...

Everything was coming together. Assuming the 'grow-a-dome' theory worked out, we'd be ready to go by september. And, so far, noone had so much as sneezed at the building and working we'd done. We were far enough out that cops and feds weren't welcome, and there was enough other constructiong going that we had remained unnoticed.. so far.
soon. I patted the engine gently, looking forward to the day when it would crank over hard, bringing us out of the 'surly bonds of earth' and into the Out There...Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Opinions, please, before I write something that tramples the setting's unspoken assumptions...
1) If your ship tows something, how does the towed item count toward your ship's mass, and thus its maximum speed?
(If the towed item doesn't count toward the ship's mass and top speed, then the Virgil Samms could put every other courier out of business by towing cargo containers around at 0.2c...)

2) How closely can ships stay in formation? Do the drives interfere with each other so ships have to have a noticeable minimum separation, can two ships touch while under full power, or something in between?

2a) How easily can two ships tow the same object? Is it simply a matter of hooking two tow cables to the object, or do the ships' engines need to be specially tuned to within 0.000000001% of each other's performance, or something in between? Or is it possible at all?

3) Is the standard ship's "speed" drive a gravity-effect drive of some sort?
(I know we were discussing this, but I don't recall coming to any consensus... The two extremes: If all the "speed" drives work on the same principle, then the 'Danes should be working on replicating the operating principles with hardtech. If they're all different, then ship repairs may be nearly impossible for lack of parts. Where on the sliding scale do we want to sit?)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Linkage
Lighthouse posted:
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will this event also give out extra prestige based on the number of members in the sg like last time?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, there will not be a prestige grant to SG's like last time's Double XP weekend.
**********************************
Well, that was not what I wanted to wake up to this morning. I guess the new GLI and GLL bases will be a bit more spartan than planned.

Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

With many thanks to Bella, Min has leveled 50. :-)
She'll wait for Wide Receiver to be online this morning/afternoon to actually level, of course. Party to be held Monday evening, after 9pm EST. She thinks a costume contest would be fun in AP with celebrations to continue in the base lounge.
Thank you to everyone who helped get her this far.
HUGS! Min and Cindy

Character: Wire Geek, written by Kokuten
Notable Mundane Attributes:
*Yeah, I know a guy: For pretty much anything, he knows someone who can make it happen, or knows somone who knows someone.. not a fixer, a fixer _finder_.
*Yeah, I know a guy.. I'll have _him_ call _you_: Sure he can get you a thousand frammistats, or find someone who can supply you with young flesh (nutritional, sacramental, or sexual?) But you'll never get contact information, you'll get contacted. WG covers his sources religiously and in a most paranoid fashion.
Wait, wait, wait, do it _this_ way: WG learns systems rather quickly, though he's never really 'mastered' anything other than mining and oresmithing. Can-do good enough to get by on almost anything, and can learn himself up enough to get by.
It's all just Pascal to me!: WG cannot code, and has an active interest in not learning.
'Wavium Abilities: The 'Wavium biomod occured shortly before he left the planet, and worked out about as he planned. Going in a normal human, WG came out a dwarf.
You'll have... My Axe!: WG resembles a Tolkien dwarf, except he's usually wearing scrubby overalls, or black jeans and t-shirts. The resemblance is not just skin deep, he's relentlessly strong, works with earths and ores, and wields an axe to great effect.
Can't see shit, captain: While WG doesn't have very good far vision, his sense of touch, hearing, and smell, as well as his near vision, are very good. VERY good. Operating a bit outside the higher range of normal human ability, WG is able to effectively leverage his enhanced senses to work better with all manner of mining-related or technological tools.
Quirks:
Oh, did I say that?: WG can only handle so much personal interaction before the filters between his brain and his mouth start to fail. Depending on what he thinks, this may get him slapped, punched, or shot. These three have all occured before. This was a part of him, and it got signifigantly worse with the 'Wavium. Normally kicks in after three days of close quarters with strange people.
Oh, that's.. you?: Low Charisma. The Wavium left him lumpy and bumpy. Can pass in a crowd with well tailored clothing.. usually.
WOOO!: WG doesn't attend cons - but he's been known to throw very boisterous, short lived parties. Boisterous, to the tune of asteroids vaporized or gone missing, personnel showing up on the other side of the system afterwards with embarassing tattoos, and some of the best late-70's classic rock ever broadcast on conventional radio.
Because We Can!: Approximately 40% of WG's time is spent on projects that are.. nonsensical, nine times out of ten. A Trout-powered optical interpolation engine (should have gotten 50 or 60 megapixels of data out of a 2 megapixel image, ended up getting .05 megapixels out of a 2 megapixel image), a cosmic scale potato cannon (can fire the common potato at .3c, whereupon.. it immediately disintegrates in the cosmic particle wash), and on, and on.
Occasionaly, the nonsense projects pan out. Indeed, most of WG's profit comes from sales of a simple, easy to use communications module, which translates across almost all comm systems, and can clip into the interwave transmitters to rebroadcast, usually 802.11w, the current 5.8ghz wi-fi spec.
Ship:
Ship Name: Foundry Hephaestus

Created by Nicholas Casler (Wiregeek, Kokuten)
Registry Number:HSF-000
Base Hull: ten acres of good Alaskan glacial moraine, Portland/Handwavium Cement substructure and framework, pseudo-organic pseudo-geodesic air shield.
Drive Type: Speed (Adjusted Mass reactionless engine) (max velocity 0.001C)
Owner of Record: Dwarven Mining and Metalsmithing Unltd.
Flag of Record: Hephaestus was an unflagged private vessel until such time as the Fen flag was available.
Purpose: Mining and metalworking, heavy salvage and repair.
Launched: September 20th, 2009
Crew:
*Wire Geek 'Geek' (Notional Captain, chief of mining and salvage)
*Sparky (Chief of operations)
*'Doc' Raven (Chief of repair and maintenance)
*Hermes (AI, majordomo and computer core)
Supplementary Crew:
* Freyja (AI, chief medic, morale officer)
* Vioarr (AI, chief pilot HSF-009 stealth scout)
* Millie (AI, chief pilot HSF-006 dispatch boat)
* Dwarves (Staff and employees)
Known Vehicle Quirks:
* I'm sorry, Dave: Hephaestus is VERY finicky about its position. Asteroid fields are fine, a meter of 'Wavium concrete and a lovely resilient dome tend to just ignore the little bastards, but you want me to park this close to the sun _why_? It'll blacken my beautiful concrete!

* Let's Go!.. Slowwwwwly: Hephaestus is a platform, not a fightercraft. She is VERY, very slow, and is sensitive about it.
* My Children!: Hermes is host, in her role of the majordomo of Hephaestus, to flocks of shuttles and smaller vessels, and she is VERY protective of them.
* It's cold - why is it cold?: The flesh-and-blood original crew came from Alaska, and keep the ambient temperature at a comfortable 50 degrees farenheit.
* I'm BORRED: Energy production and AI core speed drop noticeably when there is no active production going on. Hermes wants to be _doing stuff_, but fortunately isn't too picky about whether it's reducing an asteroid, converting a battleship back into battle steel bar stock, or decorating for a bash.
Known Crew Quirks:
* Not Invented Here: Hephaestus is a center of design and engineering - but they tend to be hard to convince to do it any way but their own.
* Wait, dwarves?: The 'crew' of Hephaestus is composed of several dozen dwarves, short stocky miners and ironworkers par excellance. Noone knows where they came from, and WG aint' talkin.
Faction: Non-Aligned, mercenary.
Home Port: Self-ported, hails the orbital shipyards at the Moon when major repairs or deliverys are needed, and no hauler is available.
Current Location: Asteroid Belt, approximately 1AU out from Mars orbit, in opposition to Mars current position.
Status: ACTIVE
Trivia:
* Hephaestus is a semi-mobile mining and refinery platform.
* Hephaestus is also one of the largest producers of raw Handwavium currently extant. Most of it is for internal consumption.
* Hephaestus' most profitable product is 'Battle Steel', an iron-based Handwavium metal stock that sees common use throughout the Fenspace, and the cutting and welding tools for same.

Edit: Changed dome type, terrain type, current location.
Edit: Changed biomod date for WG.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

I finished the email from my father, and sat back to consider the implications. As a relative newcomer to Fenspace, having made my 'jump' on September 20th, 2009, I was not as socially in touch with my 'people' as I could have been.
However, the news from Earth, well, it had some interesting complications to the relatively happy existence the fen had been leading. I took a draft of my beer, and opened a new message.
From: Wire_Geek (Wiregeek@the_airbase.net)
To: nttp://fen.current-events.disc
Subject: Earth Technology Report - November 2012
To Whom it May Alarm.
I recently recieved an email from an anonymous source on the dirtball we call 'mamma'. In my source's usual inmitibal style, he has enlightened me upon the threats and problems that 'people like me' who 'love that anime junk' may face.
I assure you, while the source is not the least bit 'Fendly', and indeed are violently allergic to the 'wave, they are trustworthy.
In the United States, you may notice a lot more air traffic. It's there, and it's not gonna go away. Here's the fun part - the new birds are 'wavium enhanced. The U.S. government has finally started showing full scale results from it's experiments in Handwavium. We don't have exact figures, but the 200% performance increase is relatively stable across the board, except for ground pounders such as tanks. Apparently, the Keith Laumer _Bolo_ books made an impression on _someone_. The new tanks are still only 200% (estimated) faster, but that 200% puts them up to an approximate 300mph on good land. The weight of the tank has stayed the same, but the rumor mill has these tanks throwing almost seven times the range with three times the projectile weight as their immediate predecessors, which you may be familiar with from the Iraqi conflicts. The rumor mill had nothing to say about armor composition, strength, or thickness, other than this little beast represented the 'end of the weakness of the top'
My source only had a few choice tidbits for me from the rest of the world, but they are.. disturbing.. in their implications. In Germany, there is a new model of Panzer that has been shown driving through all manner of modern and ancient tank traps, with an almost elegant disregard for them. The tank is known on the rumor mill as 'juggernaut'.
Bits of France have been intermittently disappearing from the Internet, and noone has much of anything to say about why.
There have been several massive explosions in New Russia - and smaller explosions on the other side. Ballistic radar tracks appeared on the internet claiming that these were absurdly-long-range artillery tests. Planet-based KEW, anyone?
Africa is.. well, ask a Blue Blazer. My source said that there's been a whole LOT of fresh green coming up recently. I wonder what's happening down there...
My Source, and my Self, remind you that the Earth is a dangerous place, no matter what your errand. Be Careful, and can someone pick me up a carton of smokes next time you're down?

Yours in Discord,
Wire GeekWire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

two for BtVS:
post-Chosen, the Scoobs set out to find the new Slayers and set up their own version of aWatchers' Council - but in BtVSland, one ofthe fundamental truths is that any formal organisation WILL become corrupt, probably sooner than later. Who and how, and what's to be done?
Lots of authors off Spike, but who'll fill his destiny? How about VampyWillow?SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Well, those of you who weren't online this evening, we had a little battle going on in the Pocket D Arena.
Minuet trounced Mother Meyai (Wide's psycho ex) 4 times in a Duel. Guess Min gets to keep him :-)
Got me thinking, we really need to try a Legendary vs Infamous battle. Maybe 3 on 3.
Possibly Team ups?
Bella, Min and ??? vs Lady Nogitsune ( does she get her ninjas?), Hexane and ????
-Cindy

Imagine my surprise when shlepping through the FF.Net directories to find that Mark has activated an account and is posting his old stories including what he says is the complete "I'm Here to Help".
Found here.